Veerle Baetens: award-winning Flemish actress talks about Tabula Rasa, women in cinema, and musicals

Laura Joffre | 17th May 2018

Veerle Baetens is far from the peroxide blonde covered in tattoos that people discovered in the award-winning movie Broken Circle Breakdown. The petite Flemish actress discreetly blends in among the Mancunians sitting in the sun in front of HOME Manchester, where she was introducing Tabula Rasa, the new Flemish TV drama presented by Channel 4’s foreign language brand Walter Presents.
 

While her behaviour is nothing like a movie star’s, her natural charisma and her expressiveness suggests this is a first-class actress. She delivers a stunning performance in Tabula Rasa, carrying it from start to finish, appearing in virtually every shot of the drama. 

 

The nine-episode psychological thriller is the gripping story of Mie, a woman who suffers from amnesia, and who is the only witness, and therefore suspect, in a disappearance case. She cannot remember what happened, and until the mystery is solved, she is locked in a psychiatric hospital. The drama follows her mind wandering between unreliable memories, where imagination and reality are barely discernible, while she is reaching for a truth that she might not want to face. At the same time, the suspense grows as the solution to the thriller seems to come closer. 

 

Veerle Baetens as Mie in Tabula Rasa

“Mie suffers from anterograde amnesia”, explains Veerle. “She had an accident, and since, she struggles to hold onto memories. The more stressful the situation, the less she remembers. So as she is in the psychiatric hospital and interrogated by the police, she goes back to a blank page constantly. Every time, she has to learn about what happened, why she is here. Every time, she has to learn about the truth, which is so difficult to hear, and people slowly give up telling her everything.” 

 

Veerle explains that Mie is very different from the roles she usually plays: “I am used to playing very extreme characters, and in Flemish drama, people often get very heated up, there is a lot of screaming. On the contrary, Mie is very held back, she internalises her feelings, and so does her husband: they think they do not need to say much to love each other and live their lives. In that way, she is much more ‘normal’ than the characters I am used to.” 

 

Veerle took part in the writing of the series. “I worked a lot on the characters, as it is something I am used to doing as an actress. We have done a lot of research with psychiatrists, and I have met people who suffer from this type of amnesia. I was interested in understanding how it affects their everyday lives. It’s simple things, like feeding the cat, not leaving the door open, or reading the paper five times to know what’s going on in the world. I met this woman who told me that every time someone smiles at her, she smiles back, because she probably has met this person before, but she doesn’t remember.” 

 

Veerle Baetens as Mie in Tabula Rasa

Veerle was new at writing, and she admits she still has a lot to learn: “The structure of the scenario is so important,” she says, “and it’s very difficult to get it right. We started by brainstorming, sharing ideas that would lead to other ideas. Then came the difficult questions of ‘when do we turn, when do we twist?’ It’s not easy. When we started writing the script, the dialogues, I was in my element again, giving words to the characters.” Veerle is writing again, for a film she is due to direct next year. “It’s an adaptation of a book, Helt Smelt, which was very successful in Flanders. It is a family story, something that happens in your past and that you carry with you all your life… I won’t say too much!”   

 

Does she think there should be more women in leadership positions in cinema? “Probably,” she answers. “But it’s a difficult issue. I don’t believe you can force things artificially, it has to be a natural evolution otherwise it’s not going to work. Of course, in history, there have been big pushes that have been decisive, and they were needed, like the fight of the suffragettes. The #MeToo movement is comparable: there is a need for change. But I don’t believe in anything that would be artificial. If I am a director, I don’t want to hire women just because they are women: I want to hire them because they are good.” 

 

Veerle Baetens as Mie in Tabula Rasa

Veerle originally studied musical theatre, starred in numerous films and TV dramas, and the original soundtrack of Broken Circle Breakdown, in which she sings, was a success in several countries. “I think I will always look for a little bit of music in everything I do. I like alternative cinema and ‘niche’ genres, but I also like the idea of attracting a wide audience to it, and adding an entertaining side to it is a way to make this happen.” Mie, in Tabula Rasa, is a musical artist. “This choice is not a pretext to make me happy because I like musicals. We chose this because it is probably the worst job you can have if you are losing your memory: how could you remember lines, a song, a dance? It’s a torture.” 

 

What Veerle loves the most in the UK is the enthusiasm for musical theatre. “In Belgium, musicals are very disregarded. They’re considered as a sous-genre, people think the stories are not good and the characters don’t have any depth. Here, it’s fantastic, people like it so much. And from personal experience, I can tell you: being an actress on a set is pretty easy. Performing on stage is another story! It’s so much pressure! So I’m glad people here recognise this.” So she makes the most of the time she spends in the UK: “I saw there is Miss Saigon at the Palace, I really want to see it!” Before long she’s disappeared, rushing to the theatre to get a last minute ticket.

 

Tabula Rasa is available to watch on All4.

To know more about Walter Iuzzolino, the curator of Walter Presents, click here.